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From: henry@utzoo.UUCP (Henry Spencer)
Newsgroups: net.news
Subject: Re: keyword-based news
Message-ID: <6061@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:21:45 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.6061
Posted: Fri Oct 18 20:21:45 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 18-Oct-85 20:21:45 EDT
References: <820@vortex.UUCP>, <1300018@ccvaxa>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 12

A friend of mine who recently attended a talk by Mike Lesk came back
with an interesting tidbit of information that is of some relevance to
this discussion.  Apparently Lesk has done some work on keyword choice,
and has made an interesting discovery:  of the various methods he tested
for automatic keyword selection, distinctly the most effective was to
use the first 30 words of the main text and *ignore* any author-supplied
keywords.  This is thirdhand info, and I don't know what other methods
he tried, but it's a nice comment on the ability of authors to pick good
keywords without careful guidance.
-- 
				Henry Spencer @ U of Toronto Zoology
				{allegra,ihnp4,linus,decvax}!utzoo!henry